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equality film popular culture - Rainbow Reporter

Milking the Applause - Sean Penn & Dustin Lance Black

February 23rd 2009 18:54
Sean Penn Oscars


Two fine Oscar acceptance speeches: first from the screenwriter of 'Milk' - Justin Lance Black




Then in the press room



Then from lead actor Sean Penn




And later in the press room.


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Milk and bean-bags

February 15th 2009 01:44
Harvey Milk
The real Harvey Milk


Sick of the smell of smoke and nervously watching the wind direction, hubby and I decided we needed a break from bushfires.

So we celebrated Valentines Day on a bean-bag watching Harvey Milk. It’s a concept in cinema-going I hadn’t encountered before, where the exhibitor saves a shitload of money by not installing seats.

Instead the floor is covered in rows of 2-man bean-bags upholstered in tasteful shades of electric blue, Biba mauve, and faux animal prints.

Time and some hard usage had massaged these once-plump beauties down to something between a doughnut and a cowpat. Memo to Mr Hoyt – your sacs have shrivelled.

I found it all added to the movie’s period ambience, taking me back to the 70’s, a time when, like the characters in ‘Milk’, I too lolled on dubious distressed furniture in fellow activists apartments planning my next outing with a bullhorn.

Needless to say there were some couples in the cinema who had less interest in the movie than in the cut-price recreational possibilities of renting an almost flat beanbag in a dark room for a couple of hours.

There was a fair amount of quiet slurping in the darkness which was not all caused by sucking up raspberry-flavoured soda while partially embedded in a scruffy bag of polystyrene beads.

I guess the management takes a philosophical view of what my grandmother would have called ‘canoodling’ (a word that deserves a revival, in my view), since there was no sign of a mobile patrol of ushers with torches. Management clearly understands that if you build a cinema in a rumpus room, a certain amount of rumpus will result.

Under the circumstances – Valentines Day, a gay-themed movie, a dark room, and bean-bags - I had expected more same-sex couples, but except for hubby and me the audience was entirely heterosexual.

There was a pair of handsome young gym bunnies, who’s already given us that “Yes we are, and we know you two are too, but don’t even think about it, you’re way too old and fat” look as we queued in the foyer, but as soon as they saw the bean-bags, they exchanged a quick glance and fled.

All credit to hubby, therefore, for whom the word ‘discreet’ might have been invented, who would probably prefer me to walk three paces behind him in public, and who so assiduously avoids eye contact with strangers that, with the addition of a wimple, he could pass for a nun. He stayed with me on our bean-bag.

Sure, he complained, refused to snuggle (let alone canoodle), grumbled about his bad back, and told me never to take him there again. But unlike Buff and Buffer, he stayed.

It all fitted with the movie’s message. As long as we continue to hide, unknown to our neighbours and co-workers, people will imagine all kinds of nonsense, and we will remain second class citizens who do not feel free to snuggle like our heterosexual equals.

Everything Harvey Milk said still holds good.

The only path to equality is to come out. You don’t have to march down the street, dress in drag or wave a placard. Just pop down to your local multiplex with a buddy and canoodle on a bean-bag.

We saw 'Milk' at The Halfpipe, Hoyts, Melbourne Central.
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The Tsunami of Sport

August 12th 2008 01:34
Get your runners on
Get your kit on!


If anyone wonders why I bother to involve myself with the RJM Trust, the tsunami of Olympics coverage provides the perfect answer.

Australia is a country where everything else takes a back seat to sport. Politics, health, war, education, business, finance – all get swept off the front pages and relegated to the ‘also’ bits of news bulletins the minute some footballer pees on a restaurant window.

If you want to get the publics attention, get involved in sport. If you want to change the publics mind, get into sport. If you want to find the last bastions of all kinds of prejudice – the ones that dare not speak their name in public – look in the club rooms of any sporting organization.

There, it’s still OK for a coach wanting to fire up his team to accuse them of being a bunch of poofs, of playing like fairies. OK to tell them to stick it up the opposition. It’s still OK for cricketers and footballers of all codes to ‘sledge’ their opponents on the field with homosexual innuendoes.

They used to do it with race. They used to call one another ‘half-breeds’ and worse if they wanted to put someone off their game. That’s not acceptable any more – but calling them a ‘pansy’ still is. That’s got to end.

That’s where the RJM Trust comes in. Football/netball clubs are the heart of most small Victorian towns – and small town Australia is still a very unsafe place to be gay.

Literally hundreds of same-sex attracted kids try to kill themselves in rural Australia every year, and many succeed, because there is nowhere – not at home, at school, not at church, not on the street – where they feel safe and accepted, as in depth research by La Trobe University (“Writing themselves in again”) makes plain. And the place where they feel the least safe is sporting events and venues.

I’m working with founder Rob Mitchell to turn local footy and netball clubs from centres of ignorance and prejudice into safe havens for people of all sexualities and genders. That’s why we’ve been working with bisexual Ken Campagnolo in his fight with the Bonnie Doon Football Club, and transsexual Tess Emery with her problems at Northern Saints.

And it’s why we’re working with the Victorian Country Football League and the Victorian AFL to launch diversity procedures, policies and training into every VCFL club. And why Rob has taken a seat on the Victorian Sports ministry committee working on the sporting clubs governance manual.

The Olympics may have swamped everything else for now, but the work has to go on, even if it’s temporarily invisible. The Olympics have allowed Jeff Kennett to slide out of responsibility for his remarks that appeared to say that a bisexual trainer among junior footballers presents the same risk profile as a paedophile priest among choirboys.

He still hasn’t given any satisfactory response on that one, but state politicians have shown interest in taking up the issue.

Sue Pennicuik of the Greens is more than happy to raise the matter in State Parliament, and there are some in the Liberal and Labor parties who are equally as unhappy with Mr Kennett.

It’s not all downside: the Olympics also allows me to have some time out here in Queensland. But don’t think I’ve gone away for long. I will be back!
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